It was one of the most popular viral videos of all time, but whatever happened to the baby in the “Charlie Bit My Finger” YouTube video?
Now 18, Charlie Davies-Carr recently opened up about what it was like to grow up as an internet sensation as part of YouTube’s 20th anniversary.
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“It was never not a part of my life, it’s always been there,” Charlie told BBC Newsbeat.
However, he doesn’t remember the actual moment in the video because he was “about 1” when it was filmed while he sat on his big brother Harry‘s lap.
The 55-second clip went on to rack up 900 million views, earning Charlie’s family more than $1 million over the years.
According to Charlie, while the video made his life “easier” by allowing him to travel and helping to fund his education (he’s currently studying law at a university in the U.K.), he “doesn’t play the ‘don’t you know who I am?’ card.”
“It’s not like I use it as an icebreaker or anything,” he said, adding, “I was never going to use this as a fun fact.”
Instead, Charlie usually brings up “something else a bit more boring” when he’s talking about himself—but it’s not always easy to keep his identity under wraps.
“My friends like to tell people, so it’s hard keeping it locked down,” he admitted. “It slips out every now and then.”
“And people are like: ‘Oh that’s cool’, for like five minutes. Or they say: ‘I don’t know what that is,'” Charlie added.
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@bbcnews The 55-second clip has had almost 900 million views since it was uploaded in 2007. #CharlieBitMyFinger YouTube #Charlie #Finger #Bite #School #Uni #IceBreaker #News #BBCNews
♬ original sound – BBC News – BBC News
As The New York Times reported, the original video was actually taken down in 2021 after the Davies-Carr family sold it for over $700,000 as a Non-Fungible Token. (Thankfully, a second video where Charlie bit Harry’s finger remains on YouTube to this day.)
In 2021, Charlie’s father Howard Davies-Carr told the BBC that he never wanted internet fame to get in the way of his boys having a regular childhood.
“By the time they’re adults, I want them to be more than just the video,” he said. “You see fame come and go, it’s very fickle. So we’ve never viewed this as fame, we’ve never viewed it as a source of income.”
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